The young mother who was humiliated on social media over her skin condition after visiting a Derry shop says she has been 'totally overwhelmed' by public support.

Mother-of-two Ciara Moore, 28, says she has been contacted by people from all over Ireland and England offering help and support after Belfast Live's exclusive story about her traumatic visit to a Derry clothing store broke on Monday.

Ciara has Psoriasis – a skin condition that causes red, flaky patches of skin. When she returned home from a shopping trip to the QUIZ store in Derry's Richmond Centre she discovered that some of the staff had made slurs about her condition and ridiculed her appearance on social media.

The status - and accompanying comments - which was shared widely on Facebook, were met with fury within the Derry community. Such was the scale of anger, there were calls for boycotts and protests outside the store.

Ciara, from the Galliagh area, went into hiding with her children and just returned to the city last night.

“I have been really bombarded with messages and people offering to help me. After the story appeared I had people offer me a seaweed body wrap to help my skin; a designer has offered to make me my very own outfit; fellow Psorisasis sufferers have sent me recommendations and hampers with products that work for them; a beauty salon has sent me a voucher for hair and make-up session and a lady from Surrey has offered to send me over some Aloe Vera products to help my skin.

“It's amazing to think they would want to help me, to get me back on track. I'm really pleased. People don't have to do it, they don't know me, but they did it anyway. It has been overwhelming.

“I am still very upset by the whole thing, but this amazing support has shown me that people do actually care. I definitely did not think that anyone would make a big deal about it. I thought people would tell me to wise up and get on with things after it happened. But the messages and calls and comments have shown me that not everyone thinks the way the people who wrote the nasty comments think. It makes me think not everyone judges me on what they see.”

Maria Meredith, who was one of the people to support Ciara

One woman who saw Ciara's story and reached out was Surrey woman Maria Meredith who is a business owner at Forever Living, a company that sells skin products. Maria has sent Ciara some Forever Living Aloe Vera products to help ease her skin.

"Ciara's story moved me so much,” said Maria.

"I felt she must have been traumatised by the incident. I was really upset reading it and so upset for her having to go through that. It's bad enough having a condition that can be so visible, and having people stare at times. To think that someone would comment on social media about it, it was disgraceful, so cruel. I felt I had to do something. I run my own Forever Living business and I thought that I should send her some products that might help, just to make her see that the world is not full of horrible people, there are some nice ones out there too.”

An investigation was yesterday launched at QUIZ over the social media comment and a spokesperson for the company apologised for any upset caused.